then, for Mrs. Penberthy's draughts. I wonder how that pretty
schoolmistress goes on. If she were but honest, now, and had fifty
thousand pounds--why then, she wouldn't marry me; and so why now, I
wouldn't marry she,--as my native Berkshire grammar would render it."

CHAPTER VII.

LA CORDIFIAMMA.

This chapter shall begin, good reader, with one of those startling
bursts of "illustration," with which our most popular preachers are
wont now to astonish and edify their hearers, and after starting with
them at the opening of the sermon from the north-pole, the Crystal
Palace, or the nearest cabbage-garden, float them safe, upon the
gushing stream of oratory, to the safe and well-known shores of
doctrinal commonplace, lost in admiration at the skill of the good man
who can thus make all roads lead, if not to heaven, at least to strong
language about its opposite. True, the logical sequence of their
periods may be, like that of the coming one, somewhat questionable,
reminding one at moments of Fluellen's comparison between Macedon and
Monmouth, Henry the Fifth and Alexander: but, in the logic of the
pulpit, all's well that ends well, and the end must needs sanctify
the means. There is, of course, some connection or other between all
things in heaven and earth, or how would the universe hold together?
And if one has not time to find out the true connection, what is left
but to invent the best one can for oneself? Thus argues, probably,
the popular preacher, and fills his pews, proving thereby clearly the
excellence of his method. So argue also, probably, the popular poets,
to whose "luxuriant fancy" everything suggests anything, and thought
plays leap-frog with thought down one page and up the next, till
one fancies at moments that they had got permission from the higher
powers, before looking at the universe, to stir it all up a few times
with a spoon. It is notorious, of course, that poets and preachers
alike pride themselves upon this method of astonishing; that
the former call it, "seeing the infinite in the finite;" the
latter--"pressing secular matters into the service of the sanctuary,"
and other pretty phrases which, for reverence' sake, shall be omitted.
No doubt they have their reasons and their reward. The style takes;
the style pays; and what more would you have? Let them go on
rejoicing, in spite of the cynical pedants in the Saturday Review, who
dare to accuse (will it be believed?) these luminaries of